Monthly Archives: May 2015

Despite some bad reviews from ideologues on the right and the left Tomorrowland is a good movie—it’s not a great movie, but then again it’s not exactly targeted at an adult audience, so one would be insane to expect perfection. But director Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol has followed up his previous successes with another wonderful film—the problem is that while there are traces of depth in his work he still hasn’t managed to flesh them out into full fledged great art. So let’s deal with the spoiler free stuff first. First you should go and enjoy this movie. It’s fun, it’s fast paced and has more than enough eye candy to keep you entertained. It starts off with a quirky narration that goes back and forth between your two main characters competing for how…

8% drop for Christians. No one should be planning on winning with this demographic alone.

So this week a new study by Pew came out looking at trends in religion in the United States. And as everyone seems to be reporting there are a lot fewer Christians. Now a lot of the articles that have picked this up talk about shifts in society or politics but pretty much only from the stance that politics and alliances are static.

Now, certainly for Huckabee, Carson, Santorum, and Cruz and the other Progressives for Jesus (what used to be incorrectly called Social Conservative–but really it’s the progressive desire to institute your values as law, just with religion instead of secular beliefs) who think they can get into the office only by rallying the Christian vote, an 8% drop in their expected voters is a bit much. Luckily, not only are those 4 idiots…

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Despite the fact that I’ve already suggested the list of conservative movies and spiritual movies that Hollywood should make there is the simple fact that Hollywood is getting a little insane in coming up with no new ideas.

As this video shows:

Now I think the one problem with this video is the complaint that too many movies are based on books…that’s not quite accurate, it would be more fair to say that too many movies are based on poorly written teen novels that pander to the lowest of the lowest common denominator. There are good books out there that could make excellent movies, and along with a few new ideas let’s go through some other things Hollywood should make.

The Pendergast Novels. I’ll admit that Hollywood hasn’t completely ignored this series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child–after all they made a barely passable version of the first book in the series The Relic–the problem being that they actually wrote out the main character, FBI Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast (It’s a sin as gracious as trying to make the Bourne movies but writing out the villain, oh wait, Hollywood did exactly that*). This is a problem because while the characters of The Relic they decided to keep do make frequent appearances, it is Pendergast, the independent wealthy, intellectually accomplished, refined Southern gentleman of old money and his penchant for cases of bizarre and unusual natures that the books center around. And this isn’t the worst thing that Hollywood has ever done because you don’t even have to redo the The Relic to do justice to Pendergast. Just start a new franchise starting with The Cabinet of Curiosities and that would give you at least twelve tales of the FBI Special Agent taking on immortal serial killers, zombies, genetically engineered Nazis and a whole host of other foes. Really, there is no legitimate reason why they haven’t made these into movies other than the fact they botched it with The Relic.

Christopher Moore’s Vampire Trilogy. If you’re not familiar with Christopher Moore’s writing I feel very sorry for you. Lamb, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, The Stupidest Angel (A heartwarming tale of Christmas terror), Fool, all of these novels should be read as they will leave you gasping for air and crying from too much laughter…but probably none would make for better film adaptations than his trilogy of vampire novels: Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck, and Bite Me tells the tale of Jody, a shop girl, who has recently been turned into a vampire who while learning to live with her new condition meets Tommy, a clueless wannabe writer. They of course fall in love. Along the way their story may also be vampire cats, mouse ninjas, Abby Normal: Mistress of the Dark, bronzed pet turtles, turkey bowling, and an elderly oriental grandmother who speaks mainly in profanity laced slang. I know that sounds insane, but trust me the actual story is far more bizarre…while being oddly tender. We’ve been subjected to far too many bad vampire romances over the last few years. Let’s have Hollywood redeem itself and give us a good one.

Freddy and Frederika. Okay, I could have put this one in the list of films conservatives should make as it is one of the most patriotic books ever written, but more than that, it is one of the best comedies ever. Dialogue that reads as a cross between the Marx Brothers, a Howards Hawks screwball comedy, and Monty Python covers every page of this novel, and it deserves to have the rapid fire delivery that all good comedy needs.

The Historian. I could see a point being made that there are too many vampire movies out there and I already have another one on this list already. Fair enough. But there is a lack of good film in that vein…and if you can manage to transfer the quality of this race through three periods of time all to track down the villainous Vlad Tepes and stop his plan for world domination.

Good Omens. It’s not so much that Hollywood needs this suggestion…production for this movie is in constant on again/off again mode. This movie is the funniest the apocalypse is ever going to be and it needs to be made into a movie. Hollywood, get this movie out of development hell and get it made.

The Great Good Thing. This book by Roderick Townley is a children’s novel about what book characters do when we’re not watching them. And in the middle of it all is Sylvie, a princess not content with her repetitive life of the same adventure over and over again. It is a story that would lend itself well to a CGI heavy children’s film (or just animate it) with a certain Wonderland feel.

Destiny’s Knights. Yeah I’m just going to slip my novel in here. It’s a good fantasy story, certainly better than other books which were heavily plagiarized (not going to name names).

Joss Whedon should make more Shakespeare movies. In fact since he has already done the key Shakespearian comedy (Much Ado About Nothing) he should now do the greatest of the tragedies: King Lear. Whedon alum Anthony Steward Head with a little makeup would now be old enough to play the role and if Whedon pulled some of his other long time favorites (Gellar, Hannigan, Carpenter) as his daughters could lead to an excellent cast that under Whedon could make the tragedy into the film that shows this as the most powerful of the tragedies that the slew of BBC and PBS attempts have so far failed at. Now if Whedon wanted to really do something fun, he would do King Lear and Christopher Moore’s Fool –which is just a comedy version of Lear–filming at the same time with the same cast showing the same story as both gut wrenching tragedy and side splitting comedy.

The Thin Man. Now, I’m not saying that the original films weren’t good, but they are a little weak on the mystery side. Now imagine Depp and Jolie as Nick and Nora. (I have no problem with the occasional reboot if there are generations between the original and the remake).

Mark Beamon novels by Kyle Mills. These books follow a slightly unorthodox FBI agent as he stumbles into one international incident after another. Eventually the books started getting weak, but the first four are strong enough to give this a chance at becoming a franchise.

True Lies 2: This was a great action film, certainly one of the top 10 action films of all time. And it probably should have had a sequel years ago. However you could still get a sequel. Now, I already hear the obvious complaint, Arnold is no longer entertaining, he’s no longer funny, and he’s actually kind of an ass. All true. Which is why the perfect True Lies sequel doesn’t really need Arnold all that much. Start the movie with Arnold’s character getting killed. Let the entire frustration over his waste of a governorship out and just give him the O.J. in a Naked Gun movie treatment. The rest of the movie is Tasker’s wife and daughter (now an agent in her own right) tracking down the killers. This works because Jamie Lee Curtis is still fiesty and funny…and as the original movie casted the daughter with Eliza Dushku (aka Faith the Vampire Slayer, and Echo of Dollhouse) you have a built in actress who you know can handle violence and wit equally well.

*You know I have no problem with changing books and characters when taking a book from print to screen…but that change should be justified either by the fact that it is necessary to make the story work on screen or be an actual improvement. Writing out the actually interesting central villain and turning the US intelligence from a somewhat bumbling ally to the central villain was not justified with the Bourne stories. They took a captivating story and turned it into trash. So I’d be more than happy to see the actual Bourne novels turned into movies (I would also add the character of Jason Bourne in the books would have ripped that wimp Damon played in half in a matter of seconds).